The Fallacy of Obviousness

The fallacy of obviousness

Now, it’s hard to argue with the findings of the gorilla experiment itself. It’s a fact that most people who watch the clip miss the gorilla. But it does not necessarily follow that this illustrates – as both the study’s authors and Kahneman argue – that humans are ‘blind to the obvious’. A completely different interpretation of the gorilla experiment is possible.

Imagine you were asked to watch the clip again, but this time without receiving any instructions. After watching the clip, imagine you were then asked to report what you observed. You might report that you saw two teams passing a basketball. You are very likely to have observed the gorilla. But having noticed these things, you are unlikely to have simultaneously recorded any number of other things. The clip features a large number of other obvious things that one could potentially pay attention to and report: the total number of basketball passes, the overall gender or racial composition of the individuals passing the ball, the number of steps taken by the participants. If you are looking for them, many other things are also obvious in the clip: the hair colour of the participants, their attire, their emotions, the colour of the carpet (beige), the ‘S’ letters spray-painted in the background, and so forth.

In short, the list of obvious things in the gorilla clip is extremely long. And that’s the problem: we might call it the fallacy of obviousness. There’s a fallacy of obviousness because all kinds of things are readily evident in the clip. But missing any one of these things isn’t a basis for saying that humans are blind. The experiment is set up in such a way that people miss the gorilla because they are distracted by counting basketball passes. Preoccupied with the task of counting, missing the gorilla is hardly surprising. In retrospect, the gorilla is prominent and obvious.

But the very notion of visual prominence or obviousness is extremely tricky to define scientifically, as one needs to consider relevance or, to put differently, obviousness to whom and for what purpose?

The fallacy of obviousness

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[url=https://aeon.co/essays/are-humans-really-blind-to-the-gorilla-on-the-basketball-court]

There is a difference between the near infinite number of obvious details and the gorilla... the gorilla is obviously unusual and out of place on a basketball court and therefore highly significant. To most viewers of the clip, the gorilla (if they see it) is the MOST significant element of the video.

It seems to me we have at least two modes of observing: active and passive or focused and unfocused. Focused active observation (like counting passes) makes us blind to whatever is outside the narrow parameters set by a specific goal. Passive or unfocused observation has no particular goal so we are free to pick up whatever seems to be significant.

Then maybe there is a hybrid between the two modes... call it the Sherlock Holmes mode... or native hunter/tracker mode... where we are actively trying to observe significant things, but we don't have a complete list of what things are significant and what aren't.